Babbage's Apparatus: Toward an Archaeology of the Black Box

摘要

In 1839, English, mathematician, mechanical engineer, and "father of the computer" Charles Babbage designed, built, and tested what he called a "self-registering apparatus" for railroad trains. Fastening to the internal framework of a railway carriage, the apparatus consisted of an independently suspended table, across which slowly scrolled a thousand-foot-long sheet of paper, upon which "several inking pens traced curves." These curvilinear tracings recorded and represented a number of the carriage's performance parameters, including rate of speed, force of traction, and vertical, lateral, and terminal vibrations.